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Grace Brown adopting an aero position on the gold time trial bike that commemorates her Olympic title during the World Championship time trial 2024.

World Championships ITT: Grace Brown gets her fairytale ending

Racing her last World Championships before retirement, the Olympic champion paced the Swiss TT perfectly to take the world title ahead of Vollering and Dygert.

Grace Brown (Australia) riding the gold bike that commemorates her Olympic title to victory in the 2024 World Championship time trial in Zurich, Switzerland. Photo: © Cor Vos

Kit Nicholson
by Kit Nicholson 22.09.2024 Photography by
Cor Vos
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On the back of two consecutive silver medals in Wollongong and Glasgow, Australia’s Grace Brown powered to the time trial world title on the shore of Lake Zurich, Switzerland, beating Demi Vollering (Netherlands) and reigning champion Chloe Dygert (USA) on a golden bike.

The 32-year-old is the first woman ever to win the Olympic and world title in the same year – a year that in June Brown announced would be her final season in the pro peloton. Naturally, she’s been asked if maybe she’s rethinking her retirement after such a successful summer, but she’s more than satisfied to go out on top.

“It honestly feels like I’m just in a bit of a dream this last couple of months,” Brown said at the finish. “These big goals might seem ambitious, but I’ve just been happy to get out on the road and do it, and to realise those dreams is really cool.”

How it happened

Vollering flew down the alarmingly fast descent that brought the riders down to Lake Zurich after the early climb from Gossau.

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Quotes of the day

It was a very different approach to the Olympics, I went over my plan like a thousand times, I had every detail dialled. I was a bit more relaxed coming into this, I didn’t have the same amount of time to prepare, but I think just having the confidence and knowing that I’ve executed many time trials well that I could still be confident in my preparation and know that I could do my best over this course as well.”

Brown was notably cool at the finish, clearly perfectly content with her final World Championship time trial, which she’d paced to perfection.

I was pleased that I was ahead at the top of the climb because I kind of expected that I might be a bit back there against Vollering because she’s such a strong climber. Then I guess she attacked the middle section of the race a bit more than I did, maybe, and it took me a couple of kilometres on the flat to get into a rhythm after all the climbing, but I felt like I gained strength towards the end, so that’s how I was able to gain back the time that I lost.”

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